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Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.

Bit unfair poll since Linux and BSD is cost free and Windows and Mac is something to pay for(we all know people hate Win and Mac because of that not because they are badly wrongly made)..anyway my favourite OS is one that just works when needed.

Cost has nothing to do with it. You could say "What is your favorite mode of transportation?" and then say if someone chose "walking" that it would be because it is free, whereas it costs money to drive.

Windows was "free" to me- it came on my computer (Wasn't aware of the Windows buy-back then)...yet I choose not to use it, because Linux works better; allows me to do more; and doesn't drive me nuts and waste my time.

There may be no perfect OS...but Linux is as close as we have to that!
I used Windows for 10 years....it was driving me crazy and requires ever newer hardware just to do half of what it did 10 years ago. The EULA is ludicrous and I hated booting up my computer and hearing the fan screaming and the hard disk moaning and straining while Windows loaded it's gigabytes of bloat.

Switched to linux 1 year ago, and never looked back. Now I'm Linux-only.

There is NO OS called "linux"
-- there is RHEL,SELS ,Ubuntu, fedora ...--

There is NO OS called "Microsoft Windows "
-- there is 98, ME,XP,vista,7 ---

There is NO OS called "Mac OS X"

Actually I disagree because x86, ARM, SPARC, ALPHA are platforms.
Microsoft Windows is a line of Operating Systems. The reason behind this is Win32/64 API has been the same since NT came out. The binary formats, software IRQs, etc have been the same forever.

One other thing I thought about is that it depends on how you define an OS. It can be anything from a kernel, userspace, and applications (such as a Linux distro), or just a kernel (which can do stuff on its own without userspace processes).

a better question would be "what is your second favorite O/S "
mine would be DOS 6
even with a GUI I spend a lot of time on the terminal (most of it as root)
so much so that more often than not I'm booting to run level 3 and using startx&

Actually I disagree because x86, ARM, SPARC, ALPHA are platforms.
Microsoft Windows is a line of Operating Systems. The reason behind this is Win32/64 API has been the same since NT came out. The binary formats, software IRQs, etc have been the same forever.

An INT and API are not the same... Application Program Interface has nothing to do with an INT (which is just a set of functions designed to be called via soft interrupt. It's not really a gateway... A20 is a gate... INT21 is a set of functions that may be called when AX,EAX or RAX as different values in it (usually low bit, as in ah, al) (I do code in assembly language)

API's have nothing to do with the instruction set, while INT's do.
Software interrupts are implemented as instructions in the instruction set, which cause a context switch to an interrupt handler similar to a hardware interrupt. This has nothing to do with API's at all!

Bit unfair poll since Linux and BSD is cost free and Windows and Mac is something to pay for(we all know people hate Win and Mac because of that not because they are badly wrongly made)..anyway my favourite OS is one that just works when needed.

There's nothing "unfair" in that; the question, as I understand it, is simply about which one of them you like the most, not whether or not you can afford to use or even buy one. A person might think a skyscraper penthouse was "the best home", even if that person couldn't reasonably afford one

Because the "OS" was not restricted to any PC operating system, then I assume it can mean any system that sits between me and hardware and allows me to operate the device. Based on this assumption, the "other" I vote for would be my calculator "OS" which never glitches on me, doesn't require security updates, boots very quickly and can do some very basic numerical integration Next would come the two obvious ones.